Never been one to let the carrier drop

Of late – the last two years I think – I’ve been sending a lot more personal emails to various people in which I write about myself. One part of me thinks this is stupid egoism, but another part has found that for whatever reason, writing to one particular person, imagining their viewpoint as I write, is more helpful for certain types of internal debugging than writing to a entire blog. It’s a lot easier to imagine that the single reader cares about me.

In general, I’ve noticed, they don’t get responses. Actually, the majority of email responses I get are to ‘action emails’ i.e. ‘would you like to do this next week?’ or ‘Should we dump this database using this technique?’. I did recently send a ‘Would your label like to represent me for a album?’ email, but it didn’t get a response either. Pity.

I am planning on recording another album starting in the next few weeks – I am looking for a space to record it in, and have sent out several emails inquiring about practice spaces. I do hope some label will decide to represent me for it, since I don’t even have the marketing skills of a cute, cuddly puppy. The theme for this album will be what I’ve learned about the world and myself in the past two years. It should be interesting.

Anyway, I hope that my personal emails don’t cause too much harm. I try to moderate my desire to say anything that pops into my head with a understanding of who I’m writing to. Occasionally I fail, which has been known to cause distress both for me and the people I write to. However, overall the exercise has been worthwhile, so I will likely continue to do it. I do think people sometimes get the wrong ideas about me from these emails, and maybe I should balance them out with emails that indicate that my life is steadily getting better, I am in fact mostly sane, and I’m not evil incarnate.

Anyway, to all those who reply, or even who accept them, thanks for “listening”.

From @ClintJCL:

Idealism unattached to practicality is a useless daydream, man.

That would apply to the previous post if the following did not:

1) I didn’t learn anything from the thought exercise
2) I didn’t get any satisfaction from writing that blog post
3) It wasn’t part of a larger, more overarching topic (or topics) which are what is my personal definition of utopia and how can I get from where I currently am to that place, or more productively, recognize what attributes of that place are in where I currently am and make myself happier by enjoying those attributes
4) It wasn’t part of a larger thought experience which is the question of where the intersection of representative democracy where the representatives are the ones interested in the topic at hand, direct democracy, communism, and technology is. I will be fascinated to see how the Chinese take advantage of the internet and computer technology to make their communist system work better and more efficiently, and I think this sort of thought experiment is worthwhile in it’s own right.

I would also comment that if one is sufficiently nihilist, everything is useless and pointless – and yet, here we are with time on our hands, so let us strive for the simple joy of striving, and think because it beats the alternative. IMHO.

I feel like if there are places available to live, and people living under overpasses who would rather be living in houses, we’ve failed. I don’t care if those people like to drink, or don’t feel like waking up at 9 am.

I feel like if there are people wanting to travel, and seats empty on airplanes, then we’ve failed. I don’t care how many bits are set in the registers in some computer that pretend to be their account balance.

I feel like if there are people who want to work, and things that need doing, and those people aren’t able to find jobs then we’ve failed. I don’t care about the registers in some computer that pretend to be some corperation’s bank balance

I feel like if there are people who want to learn, and seats left at the university, then we’ve failed. I don’t care about either the bits in the register that are the university’s account balance or the bits in the register that are the individual’s.

I understand that the value of money is largely tied into our beliefs about it. I also understand that there is someone who would rather be living indoors than under a street overpass, but who would also rather be writing music than software at this point. So I feel like you (plural, whoever’s in charge around here) have failed me. Or maybe I have failed me, because maybe I do this to myself out of a lack of faith that you would pay me to do what I want to do. On the other hand, I’ve dipped a feeler in the water in the form of my tunecore account, and money has not come in in droves despite the fact that one of the songs I cowrote with Jessica has a million downloads off my web server. So someone out there is cheating. Okay, enough, stop. The money thing is stupid anyway, and most of us know it if we stop and think about it. Really, I am telling you to grow up, whoever is hoarding all the money. Get that stuff in circulation. Stocks = meaningless. Let’s crash the system, and force it to reboot in a way that fits the earlier statements in this blog post. Chris, aside from the drugs to make everyone docile, This Perfect Day was a fucking awesome system. Why isn’t it here today?

And hoarders.. of which I’m one and I speak to myself as well.. give it away. I’ve done it, over and over, and you will feel sooo much better knowing it’s in circulation and being used in the ways it was meant to, instead of in your way. Living in the ebay world means you don’t *have* to hold onto everything, because you can always get what you need when you need it. Aside from the issue of money – which, as I’ve said above, needs fixed and I keep waiting to see someone with the clout to do something about it stand up and admit that it’s all just bits in computer registers, and what’s needed is better software and less of a “You must work to deserve to eat” attitude.

Joe McCartney would have my balls.. except this is my time, not his.